The PC and Perpetually Offended Brigade

[mugz]

Convinced my fiancee that Fawlty Towers would be in the firing line as a sort of watershed moment of the sheer buffoonery of this carry on, yesterday, when Mighty Boosh, League of Gentlemen etc were pulled from streaming services for blackface characters.

https://news.sky.com/story/fawlty-towers-episode-pulled-from-streaming-service-due-to-racial-slurs-12005118

Wonder what's next. Whilst you're always going to be able to nab this stuff somewhere on the internet, it's made all the more real by the fact that unless you still have boxsets, you don't really own any of this stuff that those great cultural arbiters - the BBC - have now decried to be unsuitable to modern, nuance free living.

if they've done fawlty towers you can see the monty python films up next

[Eoin McLove]

Only ze cutting edge humours vich depict ze Trump having ze orange face unt being a silly Nazi vill be permitted. Unt if you do not laf at zis, zere vill be consequences!

[Airneanach]

The real shame of it is that churlish barstoolers with just enough motor function to thumb their way into online comments have the patent on this  PC gone mad shit, because it's a position that I foresee more and more people being buoyed into.  At the pace we're currently going - commercial decisions and all - more people will invariably have their own watershed moment where it's their favourite show, their favourite album, their favourite cultural artefact that they've tied nostalgia too. Good ones, too. Not X-Pac dressing up as Mark Henry.

It'll eventually reach the other extreme end of the PC gone mad brigade. Together they form two sides that fail quite a bit to make a whole. Rash decisions of cultural arbitration are being made to appease them whilst the ordinary majority sit in the middle, torn between bemusement and quiet alarm. Sounds dramatic, of course, but this is a discussion off the back of a handful of shows being wiped from a handful of streaming services. So there's reason to believe it's a slope we're going down, and I'm not sure anyone has any real idea how or when we're meant to hit the breaks.

We're all headed for the barstool if my kids are coming in to a world where watching fucking Ru Paul's Drag Race is considered more acceptable to the head than a well written comedy.

[pete]

Convinced my fiancee that Fawlty Towers would be in the firing line as a sort of watershed moment of the sheer buffoonery of this carry on, yesterday, when Mighty Boosh, League of Gentlemen etc were pulled from streaming services for blackface characters.

https://news.sky.com/story/fawlty-towers-episode-pulled-from-streaming-service-due-to-racial-slurs-12005118

Wonder what's next. Whilst you're always going to be able to nab this stuff somewhere on the internet, it's made all the more real by the fact that unless you still have boxsets, you don't really own any of this stuff that those great cultural arbiters - the BBC - have now decried to be unsuitable to modern, nuance free living.

Fawlty Towers is one of my favourites!

It sounds like it might be just given a warning:

"The Germans is still available to view on Britbox, which is part-owned by the BBC, with a message saying it "contains some offensive racial language of the time and upsetting scenes". It is also on Netflix, carrying a warning about "language, [and] discrimination"."

Also says that repeats of it on BBC have been edited since 2013. So maybe an edit.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Please; no reading the details! All copies and all masters of Gone With The Wind and Fawlty Towers have been utterly destroyed by order of the one world government, that's what's happening and that's all I'll hear of it!

I don't think censorship is ever a good idea, but sections being edited out or beeped over has been with all of us all our lives. Bullshit becomes baloney, Sky edits a line out of Star Trek in UK broadcasts because it predicts a united Ireland, and so on. If there was a "fuck" in an episode of Fawlty Towers, they'd edit that out for a 7:30 showing too, speaking of "watershed" in that sense we've all known since we were kids.

[Airneanach]

Please; no reading the details! All copies and all masters of Gone With The Wind and Fawlty Towers have been utterly destroyed by order of the one world government, that's what's happening and that's all I'll hear of it!

I don't recall bemoaning the extent to which it was pulled, rather was using the opportunity to further along a valid debate.

Had no idea about that Star Trek thing, though and just had to look it up. Amazing!

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I'm not having a go at you, although your bet with your girlfriend is rendered moot by the fact that the episode has been censored on the BBC since 2013. Not much of a prediction to make yesterday!

[The Butcher]

Poor Marilyn Manson had to deal with this in the 90s and look what he's become now.

[Airneanach]

I'm not having a go at you, although your bet with your girlfriend is rendered moot by the fact that the episode has been censored on the BBC since 2013. Not much of a prediction to make yesterday!

I foresaw it making the news, pretty much. There was a certain inevitability about it. It's that classic British thing of being a much loved institution that's aged to bits.

Thankfully we didn't bet on it...

[Yung Led Zeppelin]

Please; no reading the details! All copies and all masters of Gone With The Wind and Fawlty Towers have been utterly destroyed by order of the one world government, that's what's happening and that's all I'll hear of it!

I don't think censorship is ever a good idea, but sections being edited out or beeped over has been with all of us all our lives. Bullshit becomes baloney, Sky edits a line out of Star Trek in UK broadcasts because it predicts a united Ireland, and so on. If there was a "fuck" in an episode of Fawlty Towers, they'd edit that out for a 7:30 showing too, speaking of "watershed" in that sense we've all known since we were kids.

Reminds me of the last time I was on a flight, watching a film. They're heavily overdubbed like this and it's hilarious. There was an instance of a character exclaiming "Jesus Christ!" changed to "Judas Priest!".

[Carnage]

Wait 'til someone remembers Blazing Saddles.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Wait 'til someone remembers Blazing Saddles.

People have been talking about almost nothing else on social media the last couple of days. Blazing Saddles was never likely to be broadcast at 7:30 on the BBC, besides which it is explicitly an anti-racist movie which was co-written by Richard Pryor and provides its own contextualization by making a constant mockery of the white racists depicted in it. You might as well say, "Wait 'til someone remembers half of Chris Rock's stand up material."

[mugz]

Wait 'til someone remembers Blazing Saddles.

People have been talking about almost nothing else on social media the last couple of days. Blazing Saddles was never likely to be broadcast at 7:30 on the BBC, besides which it is explicitly an anti-racist movie which was co-written by Richard Pryor and provides its own contextualization by making a constant mockery of the white racists depicted in it. You might as well say, "Wait 'til someone remembers half of Chris Rock's stand up material."

the odd thing is that chris rock's shtick is ageing really badly despite being fairly 'now', whereas blazing saddles despite being unbelievably 1970s in good and bad ways is still an ok watch, and sort of actually a pretty clever film in some ways despite being very 'then'.

[Carnage]

Wait 'til someone remembers Blazing Saddles.

People have been talking about almost nothing else on social media the last couple of days. Blazing Saddles was never likely to be broadcast at 7:30 on the BBC, besides which it is explicitly an anti-racist movie which was co-written by Richard Pryor and provides its own contextualization by making a constant mockery of the white racists depicted in it. You might as well say, "Wait 'til someone remembers half of Chris Rock's stand up material."

I haven't seen it mentioned once in terms of this issue, but is the suggestion then that the likes of Little Britain, Fawlty Towers et al. weren't lampooning those attitudes? Because that just isn't the case.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I have no idea about Little Britain, but the suggestion with Fawlty Towers is only that certain words aren't suitable for broadcast at 7:30pm. It's political correctness gone mad! :/